a A couple of yr in the past I used to be about to exit for drinks with my spouse when she mentioned, “You do understand that shirt is lifeless, proper?” I used to be sporting a clear, ironed quantity, I observed. However my spouse defined that demise is a syndrome that particularly impacts white shirts when she took me to my closet and confirmed me that every one however one in every of my 4 white shirts had irreversibly misplaced their snowy luster. “Look at them,” she insisted. “They’re grey. You would possibly as properly throw them away.”
I used to be approaching sixty on the time, and the criticism of my spouse’s shirt was notably related in that context. In view of the approaching milestone, she had steered a collection of prescriptions, together with giving up 4 glasses of wine a day, doing pilates and resuming studying French (which I had given up in protest in opposition to reflexive verbs). . Whereas I acknowledged that every one of this stuff may gain advantage me, I identified that they might additionally make me depressing. However when it got here to the shirts and clothes usually, I noticed her level.
This was a chance to surrender a lifelong dangerous behavior – dressing poorly – and choose up an excellent behavior: taking delight in my look. I might compensate for my bodily decline, I reasoned, and cheer up myself and maybe different individuals as properly. Even when I did not attempt to emulate them, I’d have lengthy appreciated these middle-aged males who disgrace their fellow members of society’s sleaziest cohort by sporting flowing overcoats as a substitute of these puffer coats that make everybody resembles an insect, or who select a shawl due to its coloration and heat.
The “giving up” a part of my program concerned cleansing out my wardrobe, with my spouse (a former trend editor) being the ultimate arbiter. Whereas she was watching TV in the lounge, I walked in with a shirt in my hand. “What about this one?” “Dying,” she would say, barely wanting up. As I paraded round with a jacket – a “trend jacket,” as I realized to name them – she mentioned, “Gone. It is too huge.” “However it’s a measurement 40, my measurement,” I mentioned. “Your measurement is definitely a 38,” she replied, as I remembered her saying it a couple of a long time in the past.
It was scary to assume how unsuitable I had been about clothes. I all the time wore them in persistent rotation. I placed on a shirt or sweater simply because it was clear: it was that garment’s flip to be worn. Or possibly I will simply accept sporting one thing boring as a result of I did not appear to have a lot plans for the day, not realizing that the prophecy might fulfill itself due to the garments. I used to be vaguely conscious that I used to be doing higher – due to elevated self-confidence – once I wore an merchandise that I used to be actively sporting Good discoverhowever I by no means considered making it every day a sensible day.
I lived on a couple of bits of sartorial recommendation. Nick Foulkes, author and dandy, as soon as got here as much as me at a celebration and mentioned with a type of pleasant exasperation: “Andrew, a tie knot ought to beneficiant factor.” I’d be fleetingly impressed by a glimpse of the very fashionable Melvyn Bragg strolling throughout Hampstead Heath. I as soon as noticed him sporting a black wide-brimmed hat like the person on the Sandeman labels, and once I noticed a noticed an identical hat in a thrift retailer, I purchased it, however I solely dared to put on it as soon as, and that was in an am-dram play. (I now understand that the benefit of dressing fastidiously is that you’re all the time in a play that you just made your self.)
Heredity might have arisen late right here. My father was engaged in tailoring, and I bear in mind him standing in entrance of a mirror in a vibrant new tweed jacket. “It is a tonic to put on good garments, Andrew,” he mentioned, adjusting his tie knot, which was all the time a Windsor, an ideal equilateral triangle, tied at his thigh. He was proper, I realized; It is a tonic to decorate up a bit. The world abruptly appears extra spacious and filled with potential.
However I’ve to work on it, and the language of menswear is turning into increasingly more delicate and sophisticated. I’ll leaf by the style pages of magazines extra slowly than earlier than, and I’ll dawdle round Jermyn Road (the mecca of the dandies), window procuring. I am fascinated – but additionally depressed – by a person my age who works in one of many fanciest shops, as a result of he combines an magnificence and extra that I might by no means strategy. He wears a properly minimize swimsuit with a T-shirt, or with pants that attain mid-calf. I aspire to the secondary advantage of bravery, embodied by the likes of Invoice Nighy or Paul McCartney.
If this all appears like an costly venture, it is not. I purchase most of my stuff at thrift shops – the great ones, thoughts you, which I usually keep watch over whereas biking. White shirts, although should are new, as I lately heard myself sternly informing a pal, as if I had recognized all of it my life.